


Caprice

by Anonymous



Category: Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Action/Adventure, Fantasy, Friendship, Gen, Magic, Not Beta Read
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-03
Updated: 2020-01-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:00:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22092964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: The Land rests easy. Conflict is infrequent, technology advances by the day and a tenuous truce has been formed between the races. For the most part, the famous adventurers of old have been replaced - by magical celebrities, by the protective rangers and most of all by peace.That is until a lonely half-elf, a bored human, an unknowable warlock and an irritable eldritch demigod walk into a bar. It sounds like the start of a bad joke, and it is, but more importantly? It's only the catalyst for an asinine and essential eight-man quest that none of them will ever forget.
Relationships: No Romantic Relationship(s)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 73
Collections: Anonymous





	1. Prepare For Trouble

It's the moments like this that make everything worth it, Wilbur Soot thinks as he draws in a last preparatory breath and feathers one hand across golden strings. He shifts forward on his stool, taking it all in. Almost better than the base joy of performance is the apprehension of a busy room on tenterhooks. 

Wilbur guides it forward, of course, on a gentle sound. After all, what is a bard without a magical hum to perk up those less attentive ears?

He carves through the fragile silence in a roar of sound and they're his. Eyes that had narrowed at the tapering of his ears and fingers now widen in begrudging respect. Nowadays, it doesn't mean anything to him when they offer their prejudiced validation like scraps to a mutt. He plucks out a melodic flurry, tweaks their bigotry towards generosity in careful steps. Small town folks like these deal little in coin, and the novelty of opportunity slowly fills Wilbur's old cap with coppers and silvers and the occasional glint of gold.

Gigs like this are so _nice._ No need to hire a bodyguard or break out an expensive warding spell when one can simply pass the bartender his permit and entrance the room from a corner. Introducing the simple rural people to a guitar is usually enough to give weight to his carefully cultivated air of faraway mystique.

_"And I can't say that I, wasted my time, 'cause I'm built by you..."_

Towards the end of his usual repertoire, he can relax. More than that, he can retreat, comfortably sinking into well-rehearsed rhythm, and pick out the more interesting bystanders. Most intriguing is an otherwise unremarkable blond at the bar, who defers to his peers but somehow commands their attention over Wilbur's magnified allure. They chuckle at some comment he makes without vitriol, and he offers a stilted smile in return. A fellow thespian, then.

They lock eyes for a beat or two, and the performer's gaze is inscrutable. There's something fiercely intense there, be it admiration or contempt. How odd. Wilbur looks away to croon some more, this time about finding love on the road.

He magically amplifies the sound with a husky vocalisation and worries about his future route. Whilst out of the way, crashing this nowhere town was a necessary detour to make; he's been putting off buying the pineflower petals needed to finance the coming tour, and the local druid purportedly gives them away for peanuts. Hopefully that's true. Goddess knows nobody else does in this economy.

There's a kind of grandeur to it, Carson can admit. As the lanky half-elf slips effortlessly between poetry and song, the performer in him sees the winning smile and occasional self-effacing tut for what they are. It's admirable showmanship, really.

But it grates. He's not the jealous type, not normally, and yet there's so much here that he covets. This semi-famed travelling bard, who looks to be roughly his own age, is eternally free of calving and grooming and planting. He must see more faces every week than Carson has in the past decade. But of course that's just how the dice are thrown.

So it's dourly that he sips at his water, and coolly that he watches the baker's son ask him to sign something for his cousin, a clever girl who lives in the Capitol and thinks him a 'right genius with music'. Delighted, Soot fixes his dark hair to the side, rifles through his satchel for a quill and kneels down goodnaturedly to emblazon the shy boy's book. Full of himself but talented enough is Carson's final verdict, and he thinks no more about it as he makes his excuses. He pays the bartender - usually Moses, but not today - and sets off home early, telling himself it's to check on the new horses. It isn't.

The muddy street that evening is the most peculiar thing. Massive cloven tracks dot the loamy soil in clumps, clustering as he pushes on into the densely developed streets of the original town centre. At first he thinks maybe a prize goat has escaped from its pasture, but the prints are so oddly spaced...

It must be injured, he reasons, and with a last long-suffering sigh to nobody he sets off to track it down. The bloated sun sinks steadily towards the horizon, autumnal and engorged in its pale orange light.

Those kids with their goats. One of these days, he swears, he will _leave_ the hairy fuck in his mother's radishes, he fucking will, he'll take his sword and ride so far in a single night that the townspeople literally will not dare-

"Remind me again how long we're going to be in there?" drawls an unfamiliar voice. Unfamiliar voices tend to turn out bad omens in a map's pinhead hometown like his own, so Carson pinpoints the griping rasp and stalks down the alleyway with a touch more stealth than before. He's not resigned to a brawl, not just yet.

"Two days, tops. Your old man-"

"Don't call him that, are you insane?"

"Okay, sure, whatever. Big boss. Eldritch employer. The dude. Anyway, it's just a cheeky bit of divine intervention." A derisive snort from by the red brick wall. "He wants us to drop in, get advised by this druid, go play traveller." There's a sarcastic, whooping laugh in response that makes Carson's teeth pulse painfully in his jaw.

"As if it's that godsdamn simple." Concerned footsteps pacing against dirt, enough for him to worry his ears have ceased all function. Hopefully just an echo.

Carson peeks around the corner. Two voices, countless footsteps. Only one vaguely humanoid shadow flits across the stone, and that's enough to send a wary burst of fear through him. It strikes him, however, that these two are most probably adventurers. Adventurers mean a possible ticket out of town. Adventurers perhaps mean a job, honest work that won't slowly pull him into the grave to be forgotten by all.

"Travis isn't big on advice," he says quickly by way of greeting, turning onto the cobbled street but chary of advancing too quickly. The shadow is cast by a cloaked man in spectacles who shakes Carson's hand warmly, which is one mystery solved. When he pulls away, their hands stay clasped together for a moment longer than you'd hope. "He's more the simple living type." 

"If you say so," replies the uncomfortably sticky outsider, but there's a smile nestled in it. If he's at all surprised by the intrusion, he doesn't show it. He looses his cloak's hood and grins impishly. The word to use when describing his eyes, his countenance, his frame is the same each time. Sharp. Dangerous, at a stretch. There's a creature of sharp angles and sharper teeth if he ever saw one, but likely human. Insofar as Carson can tell, that is.

He turns to address the warlock's partner, the man lacking a shadow and fairly any spare goodwill, and his eyes refuse to process what he sees.

Schlatt swears at livid length and abandons his proper form, collapsing inwards into the pale and scruffy glamour that he usually shrugs on in public. It's just so damned fucking uncomfortable that maybe he's not massively bothered when the main event springs back out to curl around his jaw. For some reason his tail won't disappear either. It itches against his waistband like nothing else, and when he goes to curse again he notices the human gaping down at him with unmasked horror. He is...he is blinking at an alarming rate. Things could be going better.

"Sorry," Slime quips, butting in, "my friend here is just a little horny." Even shocked out of his mind, the kid has the audacity to smirk at that. Schlatt likes him already! "You're not like a massive racist or anything, right?"

"Nope." He pops the sound, clearly still in shock, and glances back and forth between Schlatt's very obvious hoofprints and Schlatt's very solid brown boots. "All magic users and...goat people welcome." (Schlatt thinks "ram people" rolls better off the tongue, but it's the thought that counts.)

Slime introduces himself in due course as Charlie Slimecicle, travelling warlock extraordinaire, and assuages the stranger's suspicions with a discrete hand movement that means nothing to Schlatt but takes immediate effect. Their new benefactor smiles and straightens under a dusty mop of hair, utterly soothed by the spell. Hopefully that's all it did.

"I'm just Carson. Carson King," he says amenably. "Look, do you two need somewhere to go? There's an inn just down the way, and it's not exactly totally safe out at night."

Schlatt doesn't have the heart to tell him that - at least between the two of them - they could pummel the marshwyrms and grim bears of the locale into dust without breaking a sweat. Besides, he could eat.

"Lead the way, pal," he agrees after a brief glare in Slime's general direction. "Nice to meet you."

So Charlie doesn't feel as guilty as he should when the charm takes hold. It's really only a minor suggestion, and the conversation was grinding to a halt anyway. They say that in towns like this, so far outside the tourism circuit, there are exactly two things to do: work and drink. 

Seeing as he doesn't bother with the former, it's probably high time they engaged with the latter.

The pleasant round-faced blond - Carson - trots ahead, guiding them past locked doors and people either busying themselves with late work or slamming their shutters for the night. The inevitable double take when they take in Schlatt's horns is always hilarious, and immensely preferable to the alternative. 

Of course Schlatt himself grumbles the entire time, humouring Charlie's jokes until, to his delight, the calming charm begins to wear thin and Carson tentatively joins in of his own accord. They banter in tandem over facial hair and horns, and Charlie is honestly impressed by some of the material. Not often you find a funny guy so far removed from, well, anywhere that matters to Charlie.

When he trips over into a haystack and they simultaneously ask if that's the last straw, Schlatt finally puts his hoof down. He bears their raucous laughter and stomps on in semi-sullen silence, picking the strands from his dull blue smock.

"What's got his goat?" Carson mutters under his breath, lips quirking up at one corner, and that's about when Charlie decides that they are going to be very good friends indeed.


	2. And Make It Double

The life of a druid is a noble one, or so the legends say. An honourable profession, the place of a mediator between man and his Mother Nature (or for the less religious types, their intimate knowledge of the wild and its medicines deserves its own respect). Universally, they are said to be above conflict, above reproach - enlightened spiritual messengers for whom every action holds immense weight.

Travis, who falls out of his hammock at noon, wholeheartedly agrees. 

From painful experience, he knows that the dust will stay in his fur - such as it can be called that - until he showers. Aw, man. Getting water, boiling it and setting up the shower in the outhouse is a series of ordeals in itself and he really can't be bothered. Faced with the choice between laying around baked and alone and hanging out with the boys, he may as well be out of the cave already. 

Breakfast! He does actually physically need to get breakfast, like it or not. It's not the kind of day with much else to do, all told. He has some kind of spiritual appointment with some travellers tomorrow. At least three, maybe more. The ambiguous, inexplicable intuition that tells him these things is at its most vague when it comes to prophecies - which with his luck makes it a definite. 

He just hates prophecies; Druidic is so hard to read, the lines so nonsensical, and everyone always takes them so darned seriously. It's all part of the job, he supposes. And that job sure does have its perks. 

He checks on his garden on his way to the Borderlake, meandering through the shrubs and picking his fill of strawberries. He's surrounded by flowers, bulbs, roots and leaves, all with some measure of magical or medical value. (And then off to the side there's rather a lot of weed, which, what can he say? It's a bestseller.) No bird or beast in its right mind would encroach on a druid's land without permission, but there are definite gaps in his tidewort. Fun.

He ponders the theft on his walk through the forest. Dappled sunlight warms his ears pleasantly, and he comes to the conclusion that nobody really cares about a few missing leaves.

Practically grounded on the opposite shore, he sees Noah and his boat. The close-cropped beard, wide-brimmed hat and pale jacket are all he can make out from so far away. Their ranger looks all droopy and sad (that, or he's fishing).

He brushes off gravel from his shorts and takes the plunge.

Winter can't come fast enough, in Noah's opinion. Sweltering heat drapes itself above the marsh like a poor man's blanket, and it's easy to imagine it warping the deck of the _Hugbox_ more every day. On days like this, when the sun is at its blistering peak for what feels like days, it's a comfort to remember that things could always be worse. 

"I'm dying, I'm actually deceased," Travis sputters as he surfaces, sending ripples through the river. He's had a haircut since the last time they talked, but there's nothing to be done about the ruff. "It's so hot, Noah, oh my gawwwwds. How can you do anything at all?"

"I mean, I did _intend_ on fishing today," Noah shrugs with a pointed look at his thrashing tail, "but things don't always work out the way you want them to." Travis nods sagely, grasping at the edge of the boat with both hands.

"Like breathing under da water!" He hoists himself onto the deck, neck fur sopping, and dabs at the pale skin underneath with a towel. He may as well not have bothered for all the effect it has, but he doesn't seem to mind as he swishes his paws back and forth in the water. "You know, I think I'm close. Cooper says so." _Cooper says so,_ Noah's ass. He watches the retreat of a final shimmering flicker in the water and reels in his rod, defeated.

"He's fucking with you, genius. Name one single weredog you know who can swim, never mind breathe water." 

"Me!" They laugh. "No, seriously doe...where is he? Should be here by now." He pouts at Noah's boat with flattened ears, accusatory, as if their more aquatically gifted friend is about to pop up from beneath it. It wouldn't be the first time. "I mean, it's not like him to be late." 

Trying to keep the concern from his voice, Noah picks up his bow and rubs at the honeyed wood. The grip is worn smooth to the touch. There's a lot to worry about in his line of work.

"He's probably found work for the day. Bet you a silver, he's having a lovely time of it." Travis scrunches up his face and hums.

"Mm. Bet."

Cooper is having an awful time of it, truth be told.

It's hard enough being in town when nobody trusts you'll do honest work, but if he'd been able to see what that work would be today? He'd dip and guiltily mooch off of Travis again. But this odd bastard he's practically babysitting is rolling in it, and very liberal with his coin, so here he is.

Speak of the devil. The grocer's door jingles and out he sweeps, a man unlike any Cooper's ever seen.

Easily six and a half feet, maybe closer to seven. A shock of obviously dyed dark hair that, despite the soupy stillness of the autumn air, wafts gently as if in a breeze. His eyes are a little too large, skin a tad too white, to be human. Maybe half-fairy? He calls himself Theodore Nivison, but then again clapped his hands with glee when Cooper defaulted to Ted with the rejoinder, "That's about as many syllables as I can handle, dude."

It's rare to get the rich types out here, and rarer that they're...whatever the fuck this guy is, grinning at Cooper complacently in the way of wealthy eccentrics. Before trotting off towards the edge of town, clueless, he takes a moment to press a silver into Cooper's hands. Perhaps he can deal with the devil, if he always pays this well.

The shopkeeper, a rotund and jolly staple of the village since long before Cooper's birth, bursts out into the street and brandishes an enviably pudgy hand in Ted's direction.

"Thief!" they screech, turning heads across the street. "He charmed me blind, all with the wiles of the fae!" Cooper winces and pulls down his hat apologetically, but he's been recognised already by the advancing grocer. Well before he can explain where their best scrying stone has disappeared to, Ted murmurs something and his legs begin to sprint forestwards of their own accord. So that's happening.

Which is fucking abominable tactics, frankly. There's the marsh, the lake and the river to contend with, none of which have cover and all of which implicate him in the theft as the only waterbreather for miles around.

"To the fields, you moron," he chokes out, and Ted lets out an affirmative snort. They corner sharply around a woody copse, Cooper's boots slipping wetly over the soft earth, and into the cover of the orchards. By the time he's clambering over the steps at the opposite end of the trees, he realises that he's been running without magical influence for at least a minute and slumps over in place.

"What....what, exactly....are you?" he pants, breathless, scrabbling at the wood. Not his proudest moment, but his gills are clogged and his shirt is slick with mud.

"Aw, fuck, you figured it out. I'm a genasi, specifically air," Ted says offhandedly, hoisting him over the stile with one hand and no visible effort. The words mean nothing to him. "So that means my mom decided to get all freaky with a genie," clarifies his benefactor, brow furrowed, "and then, wham! Here I am. No, yeah, I'm basically the godsdamn wind."

Cooper's jaw drops, and there's an odd beat in which the only sounds are the rustling of leaves and the distant shouting of angry townspeople. Some of the words they use, without a hint of irony, are enough to make even him cringe.

"Figured it out? You don't look even slightly human," Cooper drawls, gesturing pointedly to the non-existent breeze worrying Ted's thick scarf. "It wasn't exactly hard to tell."

Theodore is enamoured by these people. So small and fragile, and so very brave. Were it just him, he'd simply melt away on the breeze for a while and wait for the hue and cry to calm. But he feels strangely responsible for...

"What's your name?"

"Uh. Cooper. It's kind of ironic, 'cause I actually used to be apprenticed to a cooper and-"

Nodding carefully at intervals, he looks down at his disheveled tour guide. Pale with fear and adrenaline, smeared in black grime, Cooper glares back but keeps talking. The irregularities that had caught his eye in town were really just commonplace magical body mods - gills and slitted pupils, webbed fingers and the like - but certainly enough to warrant interest in a middle-of-nowhere town full of wrinkled bigots and tired teenagers. He's not sure whether be insulted or not that he was assumed to be one of the Fair Folk, in less savoury language.

"-which I have you to thank for, by the way. Basically everyone has it out for me as it is," Cooper's gills flutter angrily as he revs up, "and now they think I steal food for rich people! It's already impossible to get an honest day's work when you don't look like other people, and I'd hope someone like you knew that!"

He stalks forward over the last few words to poke Theodore right in the chest. When he doesn't fall back, just cocks his head to one side and blinks awkwardly, Cooper grunts and deflates against the low orchard wall.

"Sorry, dude. Ted. Whatever. It's just not your place. What do you even need to steal for? You can obviously afford to just buy whatever you need." Ouch.

 _It's clearly not your place either,_ he almost points out before catching himself on the sound of the moniker. Ted. It's a good and simple name, that. A human name.

"It's-well, it's for-it's, right. You know Moses?"

Cooper sucks in air through his teeth, aggression forgotten as they watch the townsfolks squabble distantly by the edge of the marsh. He crouches by the hedgerow and motions Ted to do the same.

"Yeah, I know him. About yea high, bartender, oddly knowledgeable about really specific shit?"

"Mmm, that's the one. When you showed me the inn, he wasn't there. Everyone said the best way to find a missing person was to ask the druid, um...I can't remember his name."  
  
"Traves for short, but Travis is fine too," Cooper answers automatically. Ted smiles beatifically at him with new interest, then. When Cooper smiles back, his teeth are sharper and whiter than he'd thought. "The real one's like," he snarls lowly, "and then the spoken part's after that. Something de something Aralétraves. So, yeah. He's just Trav, really."

"Didn't know you spoke were," Ted comments placidly, but his mind is spinning. What luck he must have, that the first person he meets in this backwater just so happens to be not just a werephone but a friend of the local druid. "Maybe you could take me to go chat with him?"

Cooper visibly retracts into himself. It's fascinating to see - his fins flatten themselves to his head where you would expect ears to be, and his pupils are dark pinpricks in a vista of blue.

"Jeez, man, I dunno. He's so busy these days." Up until now, he's been utterly forthcoming, but Ted appears to have touched on a sore spot. He makes a split-second decision and takes out his coin purse. It's a hefty leather pouch tied to his belt and pack, and it contains over three dozen platinum chips from his last serious commission. A small fortune.

"If you can convince him to scry for Moses tomorrow, then by the air you can split this. I don't need it. A cool four hundred gold, or thereabouts."

That brooks no argument. His new acquaintance peeks inside the purse and nods once. Struck dumb either by the money or the sheer absurdity of the situation, he turns away to fiddle with his fins as if Ted isn't there. The rabble march on home. Slowly, reluctantly, the sun follows. As it drips buttermilk across the horizon, a creature of the seas and a product of the skies set up camp on damp earth that doesn't particularly care for either.

Across town, a charismatic half-elf is playing carefully crafted songs about emotions he no longer believes in. A hale young man looks on with large blue eyes and wishes he was anywhere else.

Unaffected by such conceptual troubles, a stoned weredog and a gifted ranger lounge in the shade by the village they protect. They are comfortable and content and more powerful that they know.

Walking unnoticed in the kerfuffle of the hue and cry, a formidable warlock makes his way through the abandoned streets. It is his duty to accompany in his quest The Dark Lord's Scion, He Who Cannot Be Felled, Fated Catalyst and Child of His Capricious Wiles, who will be complaining at length about the humidity for the next two hours.

Above them all, Something watches. It grows stronger.


End file.
